


rest you merry people all

by menocchio



Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series)
Genre: Christmas, F/M, M/M, Multi, Murder
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:42:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29783886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/menocchio/pseuds/menocchio
Summary: Seemingly insurmountable odds? Toppled. Daniel wins again. And maybe he gets to actually reap some benefits due the good guy for once, like he can stand back and breathe and maybe think about going to Disneyworld. Daniel wins again and this time there won't be any need for counseling.(the trio covers up a homicide)
Relationships: Amanda LaRusso/Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence
Comments: 111
Kudos: 89





	1. Chapter 1

For the first ten seconds or so, it feels really good.

Seemingly insurmountable odds? Toppled. Daniel wins again. And maybe he gets to actually reap some benefits due the good guy for once, like he can stand back and breathe and think about going to Disneyworld. Daniel wins again and this time there won't be any need for counseling. Great: Merry Christmas, him. Truly, what a season for joy and thanks. He needs a drink.

Chest still heaving, he stares down at Kreese, at the ill fit of his gi and his old man hunch – God, he was so _old._ Had he been this old when Daniel hit him? Surely not. For decades this man has haunted his dreams and lingered in the shadows of his thoughts. There could be no peace, no success or platform Daniel climbed that felt high enough to be out of reach from Cobra Kai. Somewhere in his mind, he knew they’d always keep coming.

Except – not anymore.

Daniel wins again, for the last time. Disneyworld. That drink. Christmas?

He breathes and watches the crumpled form at his feet, which continues to not stir or move. He licks his lips. “Uh.” He looks up wildly, eyes crashing into Johnny’s.

“So is. Is he?” says Johnny, pointing.

“I don’t know,” he says.

Johnny steps through the ragged hole in the window, dress shoes crunching over the broken glass, and comes to stand beside him. They look down at Kreese.

“Maybe he’s faking it,” says Johnny after a moment. “He’s done it before.”

“Not like this, he hasn’t. Hey, _don’t-_ -” because Johnny is lifting a foot and nudging the man’s body.

The head rolls loosely around the broken vertebrae of the neck; the eyes are still open. They both jump back.

“Jesus.”

“Oh, fuck!”

“Yeah, definitely dead.” He glances quickly around and then his arm shoots out to steady Daniel as he stumbles backwards. “Whoa. You, uh.”

“I killed a septuagenarian,” he says numbly. “Johnny, I killed a septuagenarian in a strip mall.”

“You killed an evil septua – whatever,” corrects Johnny. He looks a little pale, and his eyes keep returning to the body – oh god, _the body_ – but his hand on Daniel’s elbow is steady and strong. “And I don’t see what the location has to do with anything.”

“Decades of building a life, and I just ended mine in Reseda; location,” says Daniel hotly, “is everything.”

“You’re starting to sound hysterical. Calm down.”

Daniel shakes off his hand roughly. He hates people telling him to calm down. “Don’t tell me what to do. We – we need to call the police.” There: action. That's more like it. Police, then that drink.

Johnny looks confused. “What? No. What? You’re crazy, we’re not calling the police. I’m not going to prison.”

Daniel is already reaching for his phone. “I’ll tell them you had nothing to do with it.”

In his heart, or somewhere, he knows the police will solve everything. He's good with the police: he's an upstanding citizen, a prominent man in the community. A job creator. He basically pays their salaries. They'll understand, won't they understand?

“Right, because cops are known to be such great listeners. Look at this place. And with Robby inside, all banged up? LaRusso,” he says, putting a hand over the phone, which is shaking because Daniel’s hand is shaking, “you really want to spend the rest of your life in jail because of Kreese? That’s like, letting him win. Letting him have the last laugh.”

“I don’t think he’s going to be doing much laughing,” he says slowly, because maybe Johnny doesn't get it yet, “because he’s _dead_.”

Johnny nods readily. “And some day, if you're not really stupid right now, you might be able to look back and say that with pride.”

Daniel feels his face twist. “You're crazy, you know that? You probably deserve to be in prison – fucking give that back _right now_ , Johnny,” because he's stolen his phone. “What. What are you doing?”

Johnny takes a couple steps away and says over his shoulder, “I'm calling your wife. Maybe she can convince you not to throw our lives away over this asshole.”

Daniel breathes on this nightmare for about two seconds before jumping at the other man, hand reaching for the phone. Johnny grunts and twists in the air, trying to throw him off, but Daniel locks his knees and hangs on. In the shock of the aftermath of homicide, it's like they've both forgotten every move of karate they'd ever known, and are reduced to artless scrambling.

“You will – not – make her – an accessory,” grits out Daniel, arm twisting around Johnny's already-bruised neck.

Johnny gasps and they stumble back into the dark dojo and fall to the mat. The phone jumps out of Johnny's hand and they break apart. Johnny coughs; Daniel groans. And a couple feet away, voice shockingly loud over the phone line:

“— _Daniel? Hello? Daniel, what's going on?_ ”

They both crawl-lunge for the phone. Johnny gets to it first, and Daniel pulls his hair, reaching desperately.

“Amanda, come quick,” gasps Johnny, a second before Daniel stabs _end call_. Johnny throws an elbow back into his face, and Daniel falls to the side, off his back. His hands come up to cup the painful cartilage.

“Why would you do that?” he demands thickly behind his hands. “What is wrong with you?”

Johnny ignores him, looking around the dojo. He climbs to his feet and staggers back out through the broken window and starts to heft Kreese beneath the arms. He glances from side to side like he's checking that the coast is clear and starts dragging the body back inside.

He glances over his shoulder. “Would you help me with him? We have to move quick.”

Daniel drops his hand from his nose. He folds his arms staunchly. “No.” He is going to sit right here until the police or his wife comes. Fuck Johnny. He wants to get his DNA all over a dead body, serves him right. "You know, you're probably destroying my self-defense case right now, moving him."

"Don't be stupid," says Johnny, showing a disgusting lack of effort with carrying the body. Daniel could do that too, if he wanted. With the adrenaline coursing through his body right now, he could probably drag _two_ bodies. "No one would believe it was self-defense. He was like. Eighty. And he had a restraining order against your wife. You're fucked."

Then everything gets considerably more complicated, as a groan issues from behind him. Daniel startles, whipping around and rising to his knees, fists coming up. But it's only Robby.

Fuck, they forgot about Robby.


	2. Chapter 2

Johnny pauses in his progress halfway across the mat, looking quickly between Robby and Daniel. Kreese starts to slip out of his arms. With the way the head is hanging, there can be no mistaking his commitment to persisting in being extremely dead. Robby would only need one look to realize it.

 _Shit_ , says Johnny's expression. _Now what?_

 _This is your fault_ , Daniel tries to communicate back at him. And he must be successful, because Johnny clearly replies with _something-something-Daniel-murdered-Kreese-and-Johnny's-the-only-witness-so-maybe-he-should-be-less-of-an-asshole-if-he-can-manage-that?_

Robby groans again and starts to shift.

Daniel frantically points to the bathroom in the hallway. Murder is one thing, but they don't need to be dragging Robby into it. This would probably be a little traumatizing? Someone has to be responsible and think of the child.

As Johnny hastily resumes dragging the body, Daniel goes over and crouches beside the boy, hands hovering.

“Robby? Hey, are you alright?”

Hazel eyes flicker open, groggy and confused, and alight upon him. It's a little devastating, watching the initial trust harden and cloud over into icy dislike.

“Mr. LaRusso? What are you doing here?” He starts to sit up, and shakes off Daniel's hands when he tries to assist. Robby touches his forehead, feeling out the nasty bump forming there. He looks around. “Where is Sensei Kreese?”

And for the first time, Daniel properly takes in the gi the boy is wearing. He bets he knows what's on the back, the black snake coiling its way deeper with every second. His stomach sinks: oh, Robby.

Over in the hallway, the toilet flushes loudly.

“We – ran him off,” says Daniel, and okay, it's official. They're doing this. Covering up a murder. No going back now – there really hadn't been the moment Johnny moved the body, if he's being honest, but that was different, because that was all on the other man. This is Daniel speaking now, and with four little words he has taken ownership of the cover-up. Co-signer to Johnny Lawrence, great, that's just – this is going to go _so_ well.

Anyway, the less he says, the better, surely. The fewer lies to keep track of, the less likely he is to slip up.

Robby slowly stands, and Daniel stands with him, hands still outstretched in case he needs steadying. The suspicion in the boy's eyes grows. “Ran him off? Sensei Kreese wouldn't run.”

“Bullshit,” says Johnny, coming out of the bathroom. He closes the door behind him firmly; real subtle, Johnny. “Man spends his whole life targeting teenagers, you don't think that's the mark of a coward?”

“How's that _any_ different than what you two do?” says Robby coldly. He'd gone still the moment his father appeared.

“Look, trust me – you should've seen Kreese after Mr. Miyagi had his way with him back in the day,” says Daniel, trying to side-step the family drama and stick to the part where they allay any possible suspicion about there being a dead bastard slowly going stiff in the toilet. “The man's not as brave as he seems – but Robby, why are you here? Why didn't you come to me? A strip mall in Reseda is nowhere for a boy to be at this hour.”

Robby ignores the question, leaning around Daniel to stare across the room. “Who broke the fucking window? Did Sensei burst out of here like the Kool-Aid Man?”

Lies are best supported by judicious application of truth, so Daniel says, “He sort of threw me through it.” And he dabs at the blood he can still feel oozing from the cut on his forehead.

He squints at him, skeptical. “But you somehow turned the tide of the fight after that, ran him off?”

“It _was_ two against one,” says Johnny, and – hang on, okay.

“I mean, I mostly handled him myself,” says Daniel, because it's an important point, one he thinks they should all be clear about. Johnny shakes his head at him, expression a second from giving the game away. Where are the man's priorities? Can't he act? Loosen your grip on your pride for a second, man, good God.

Then everything gets considerably more complicated, as Sam's voice calls from outside:

“Oh my god, look at all the glass.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Is that,” begins Johnny, craning his head out at the sidewalk.

“Great,” mutters Robby.

“Sam, honey?” Daniel calls. He stretches out a hand towards Robby and Johnny, like he can forestall them from moving. If everyone could just stop moving entirely, that would be great, actually. He takes a few steps towards the window. “Sam, what are you doing here?”

His daughter and Miguel appear, staring in at them.

“Great,” says Robby again, now sounding a lot more hostile.

“We came to help,” she says, sounding a little lost. She focuses behind him. “Robby, what are you _wearing_?”

“You know what I'm wearing.”

“Sam, you should be at home,” tries Daniel, and he is roundly ignored, because this is what happens when teenagers are put in a room together.

“Explains why he wasn't part of the attack force – we get jumped and he's over here joining up,” says Miguel. His face is a swollen mass of cuts and bruises, and it makes Daniel wince just to look at him.

“Yeah, I was here,” says Robby, stepping forward. “Here stopping my dad from assaulting Sensei Kreese.”

“Sensei _Kreese_?” says Miguel. “Yeah, that makes sense. Of course you'd go Cobra Kai now.”

“You mean when it's finally being run right?”

“Okay,” says Johnny loudly, pointing to the broken window, “everybody out.”

“I'm staying here,” says Robby stubbornly, folding his arms. “I'll wait for Sensei Kreese.”

“This isn't a hotel and I'm closing up shop. It's my name on the lease.”

“Is it, Dad? Is it?”

And Robby probably has a point, but Daniel is backing Johnny on this one. “I think it's time for everyone to go home, actually. Kreese isn't coming back, Robby, but you can stay with us—”

“I'm not going anywhere with you.”

“Then you can go with Johnny.”

“Forget it.”

“Well, tough,” says Johnny. “You're seventeen and you can't stay here.”

“Were you staying here?” asks Sam, sounding scandalized. “Like – _staying_ here?”

Robby colors but says nothing.

“Sensei, what happened? Was there a fight?” asks Miguel. He's a bright kid, so he's probably noticed the pointy weapons littering the ground and broken glass underfoot. It is probably a rhetorical question, a request for explanation.

“I told you, he assaulted Kreese,” says Robby.

Miguel looks back at him like he'd been hoping for the opportunity. “I'm not going to listen to any story told by someone in a Cobra Kai gi, let alone the guy who put me in the hospital. You want to talk assault? How do you think my face got like this, I ran into a door fifty times?”

“Best you've ever looked, man.”

“Quiet!”

They all look at Johnny. Daniel feels a headache starting to unfurl behind his right eye. Nascent hangover or the fight or his entire life going up in flames, who is to say?

“Kreese is gone,” says Johnny. “And he's not coming back. We made it very clear to him what would happen if he did.” And he speaks with such finality, it feels like that should be the end of the moment. Cue scene transition. But the teenagers only look at him for a couple seconds before they start asking more questions.

“What's gonna happen to him?”

“You can't do that. That's not your decision to make.”

“But what about his students, what's gonna stop them?”

Johnny puts his hands over his face, and Daniel really needs to get everyone out of this crime scene, now.

Every second that passes is another second someone outside might notice the commotion, and that's assuming the police haven't already been called. And if they've already been called, they'll be on their way. Even with Reseda response times that won't be too long, and they won't need a warrant because broken glass is clearly probable cause, and anyway, Johnny's name is definitely not on any goddamn lease, Daniel doubts there's even real paperwork for this place. Which would make it Armand Zarkarian's problem, and he can just imagine the look on that fuck's face when he realizes he can stick it to Daniel. He'll dine out on every other business owner's dime for a year on the story he'll be able to tell about how Daniel LaRusso killed an old man in one of his filthy Reseda strip malls. Maybe he'll even keep the dojo as-is, turn it into one of those gruesome true crime tourist destinations, with tacky recreations of the fight done three times a day – he'll get someone short and ugly to play Daniel, of course – and a whole display preserved in the bathroom: _this is where they stashed the body—_

“Dad?”

Daniel blinks and looks around. They are all staring at him.

“Are you okay?” asks Sam, and she looks scared. She shouldn't be scared anymore. Kreese is gone. He wishes he could tell her that.

“I'm fine, I'm just tired,” he says, and he thinks his voice sounds normal. “Johnny's right, we should all go home. Miguel, you should still be icing – everything,” meaning his face and probably entire body, given the way he's holding himself, “and Robby, you look like you could do with some Advil. But – it's been a very long night, and there's still a lot of cleaning up to do at home.”

“Mom said we're getting a hotel room.”

And oh Christ, that's right.

Daniel fumbles at his pockets for his phone, but it's still lying on the mat. He walks over and picks it up, conscious of the four sets of eyes watching him. He has eight missed calls and three texts. And everything is about to get considerably more complicated, because the last one, timestamp less than a minute ago, simply reads:  _here._


	4. Chapter 4

And here she is: the love of his life, the Sonny to his Cher, competent mother to his children and the best partner a guy could ask for in the cutthroat world of auto sales. Still wearing the dress from the party but now paired with a pair of sneakers, because she is nothing if not sometimes kinda practical. _Amanda_.

He's never been more viciously unhappy to see her.

They are all silent as they watch her take in the scene: the broken window, the knives on the ground. Robby in his gi and Johnny with his purpling neck. Finally: Daniel, who has completely avoided looking at the mirror wall and has no clue what he looks like right now. Still, he tries a smile on her.

She winces a little.

“Look, just. Is this – whatever it is – is it over?” she asks.

“Yes,” says Daniel.

“Yeah,” says Johnny at the same time.

“It'll never be over,” mutters Robby, and _okay_ , Daniel gets it; they really messed up with these kids.

But how was he supposed to know that an off-the-cuff quasi-flirtatious quip was going to lead to all this? A man tries to prove he's moved on and thoughts of the past no longer haunt him, that he can joke about it – it isn't supposed to be the first step on the path to gang warfare and home invasions and murder – manslaughter? He could probably get it knocked down to manslaughter. He sold an Audi to that one guy who worked in the DA's office; he just needs to make a call or two. Hiya, Trevor, how're those wheels treating you? Keeping up that Sirius XM package? Well, say, while I have you on the phone....

Daniel clears his throat. “Amanda, how about you take the kids back to the hotel? Johnny and I will hang back – clean up a little, maybe,” he stares at the floor-to-ceiling hole in the glass wall, “put up a tarp, or something?”

“Better idea, Daniel,” she says, smiling back at him like he's the fucking _cutest_ little punk she ever married, “the kids here go get something to eat nearby and I help you guys?”

“Oh, honey, that's really not – I mean, your dress, it's not. I think we can handle it.”

“We could use the help,” says Johnny, and Daniel is going to kill two generations of Cobra Kai this night.

He can't even glare at him or protest, because that would give the game away. It's terrible. Daniel is not built for withholding this kind of displeasure. He tries to subtly shake his shoulders out.

“Fantastic,” says Amanda with a brightness so false, it probably can't even help with seasonal affective disorder. She turns and puts a hand on Sam's shoulder. “Okay, Sam, you drove? How about you guys go wait for us in a diner – pretty sure there's a Denny's up on Sherman, it'll be open and this won't take too long—”

“You want us to go sit in a _Denny's_?” says Sam in disbelief. “Look at Miguel!"

And Amanda does, a second later half-reaching out with a creased forehead, like she wants to soothe the raw, pulverized skin around the boy's eye. She gives him an earnest, bracing look. “Don't worry, kid, you'll fit right in. The waitstaff there are professionals, they won't ask any awkward questions.”

Miguel looks at her, slightly confused in that way people get sometimes with Amanda. She's never quite what they expect, because she's so pretty. “Uh, thanks?”

“And Robby, sweetheart?” says Amanda, looking over and beckoning, “Come. You're going with them.”

Sam and Miguel conceal their lack of enthusiasm poorly, while Robby appears frozen: caught between his habitual need to deny all adults and – Daniel feels impossibly stupid for having never recognized it before, being the son of a single mother himself – his desire to make things easier for the mom on hand.

But as they all watch, some more open-mouthed than others (get a fucking grip, Johnny), Robby lowers his gaze and awkwardly rubs the back of his neck and starts forward. Maybe a well-manicured hand just has more summoning power? Someone should conduct a study.

He makes it a couple steps before stopping and muttering, “I need to grab my shoes, hang on—”

Shoes which are likely in the back room which is connected to the main room via the hallway, upon which sits the bathroom which holds the cooling corpse.

“I'll get them,” says Daniel loudly, and he knows he's speaking too loud; he knows it, alright, fuck _off_ Johnny. Robby blinks over at him and Amanda narrows her eyes, gaze sliding from him to Johnny and between them down the hall. Daniel raises a jaunty hand like he sees none of this. “I'll grab them, and your bag – you should have your bag – you have a bag here, right?”

And he's turning and walking down the hallway without waiting for a response, because then he can make furious, frantic faces at the wall without anyone the wiser.

There is a backpack _and_ a sleeping bag, because Robby is his father's son and probably thinks moving into the backroom of a dojo is a perfectly reasonable path in life. Tragic. Daniel grabs the shoes and bags and hurries back into the main room.

Robby glances around, plucking at the collar of his gi. “I guess I should change—” and he steps towards the bathroom.

Before Daniel can do anything more than go pale and start to picture the screaming and accusations that are about to ensue, Johnny steps neatly in front of the door, blocking his son's path.

“You don't want to do that,” he says, and he glances at Daniel for only a second, less conspiratorial than a flickering _calm the fuck down_ , “I had a bunch of these shrimp roll things at a Christmas party earlier, and I don't know what happened, but on top of the martinis, it all kinda went through me, and when I say all, I really mean—”

Robby is already backing away, face twisted in disgust. Even Miguel is faintly cringing. Nice one, Johnny. So the man has his uses.

And while Daniel stands by and desperately tries to think of a way to stop what's happening from continuing to happen, Amanda ushers the teenagers out of the dojo like it's _easy_.

“Look,” he says urgently to Johnny, while she's outside on the sidewalk and out of earshot. “We don't have to do this. The moment she finds out, she's culpable, do you get that? Do you care at all that you're about to ruin her life?”

“Quit being so dramatic,” says Johnny, looking fed up. “You're married. That means whatever crime you commit, she can't be held responsible – that's in the Bill of Rights. Ever read a book?”

And Daniel is on the balls of his feet, hissing into his face, “That is _not_ in the Bill of Rights, you illiterate neanderthal—”

“Okay, guys,” says Amanda, standing ten feet away and now alone. She folds her arms and surveys them with a steely eye. “What the hell happened? Where's Kreese?”

And Daniel is helpless to stop everything getting considerably more complicated then, as Johnny merely raises a hand and points wordlessly to the closed bathroom door.


	5. Chapter 5

The door swings open wide.

Amanda plants herself in the doorway and Johnny props his shoulder against the frame beside her and Daniel stands behind them both. He takes one look at the crumpled, black-clad thing in the bare corner of the bathroom and quickly decides to look elsewhere.

Like – at the ceiling. He purses his lips and generally tries to comport himself like he had nothing to do with any of it. He needs to practice, after all.

It's not even quite intentional, this act. Some part of him has always suspected if he just commits hard enough, he can pull anything off. And maybe this will be his magnum opus: a corpse in a toilet and him a couple feet away, totally cool and collected as his wife surveys all.

“He deserved it,” Johnny is saying quietly. “I mean, he was about to brainwash my kid. And he was kinda strangling me again.”

“Again?” says Amanda, not moving or looking away from the thing in the corner of the bathroom.

“Daniel never mention that part? Yeah, He was pretty pissed back in '84, after the All Valley, and he kinda took it out on me—”

“He choked him,” Daniel finds himself saying, voice a little thready; gaze fixed elsewhere – maybe thirty-whatever years in the past, on Johnny's reddening face, the frantic, straining line of his body. “Right there in the parking lot. In front of everyone. Like, he was so angry, he didn't care that people could see. Mr. Miyagi had to step in, make him let him go. All over of a trophy.”

“Yeah, anyway,” says Johnny, “he was bad news. Like, it was us or him.”

“Uh huh,” says Amanda. It is impossible to read her tone; such is the nature of _uh huh_ , really.

Daniel rubs his hands on his slacks. Then he blinks down at them. These hands that did _that_ , created the thing in the bathroom. They've done other things, though, haven't they? A lifetime of good things that don't just get negated because of the one bad thing? These hands cradled Sam and Anthony as newborns, fed them and changed their diapers and played peekaboo. These hands held his mother, his wife, Mr. Miyagi; sanded the floor and painted the fence; _wax on, wax off_ —

For a moment, he is sure he is either going to be sick or burst into tears. Somehow seconds pass and he does neither.

“Daniel.”

He looks around at his wife, who is watching him: eyes worried. Johnny is still looking into the bathroom, as if hypnotized.

“Yeah.”

“We need to get him out of here. Immediately.”

It's the only course of action left to them, but he wishes it was different. He wishes they could just close the bathroom on the thing in the corner. Lock the front door to the dojo and exit through the broken window and quietly get in their cars and drive away and never, ever come back to Reseda.

“Yeah,” says Daniel, “I know.”

There's no escaping what he's done, and he knows it's only going to get considerably more complicated from here on out.


	6. Chapter 6

It is a little weird, after being told so many times over the years that John Kreese was dead, to finally have undeniable proof. Johnny just wishes the proof wasn't so inconvenient. His life continues to be one long match of win one, get two kicks to the balls.

They close the bathroom door again, because it's kind of hard to strategize with the grey face hanging there in the corner. Pretty amazing how quickly he went from looking passably asleep to dead-dead- _dead_. The movies really get that one wrong.

Daniel stops looking quite so fucked up once the door is closed, so that's another reason to do it.

He hasn't thanked Johnny for calling Amanda, and he probably won't, but Johnny has decided to be the bigger man and let it go. Maybe in thirty years they can grab a beer-and-martini and Daniel will slap him on the back and go, hey remember when? Did I ever say thank you? Well, thanks, man. And Johnny will shrug like it was nothing. The end.

Right now, though, Amanda is asking him about security cameras in the strip mall.

“Probably nothing on the outside,” he says. “Lynn pretended to have a paranoid phase a while back and took 'em all out.”

“Lynn?”

“Homeless lady,” he clarifies. “Real pain in my ass.”

Daniel makes a faint protesting sound. “You shouldn't say that about someone who is homeless.”

“Why not?” he demands. “Look, you don't know her, you don't know what you're talking about. She once took a dump right behind my car, made sure I'd reverse over it—”

“But she took out the security cameras,” interrupts Amanda. “So right now, she sounds like my favorite person here.”

“She's not even _here_ ,” mutters Daniel a little resentfully.

She ignores him. “So there's no cameras? We're all good there?”

Johnny says, “Well – the minimart's probably still got its inside ones.”

They all pause as they try to remember if they passed by the doors of the minimart. After a second, Daniel says, “Sam and Miguel – they came from that direction.”

“Nothing we can do about it right now,” decides Amanda, and Johnny was so right about her, what a fucking woman. How and why did she end up with Daniel LaRusso? “So first thing we do is, we move him into a car and get him away from here.”

“Shouldn't we sweep up the glass?” asks Daniel. “Going to attract attention, soon as someone comes by.”

“So it'll look like a break-in,” she says.

“Who would break in to a strip mall karate dojo? There's not exactly a till to raid.”

“I don't know, Daniel,” she says, sounding annoyed, “maybe they wanted to steal some equipment.”

“So now you're saying we have to steal equipment, to make it look good? Let's just load up Johnny's caravan with some heavy bags, compound the chargeable offenses—”

“My name might still be on the lease,” says Johnny. “So it wouldn't be illegal.”

Daniel turns to him. “There's no lease, you think we don't know how Armand works? The man tried to kick Kreese out, it didn't take.”

“If there's no lease, then maybe the police just won't care.”

“I really think we should focus on the dead body right now,” says Amanda.

Daniel shuts his mouth. After a moment, he licks his bottom lip and nods. Passes a hand over his eyes and says, “Which vehicle?”

“Caravan's trunk is a joke,” says Johnny. “It's open, anyone could look in and see him.”

Amanda and Daniel look at each other. Dealership douchebags comparing trunk space on the fly; they probably knew the holding capacity down to the cubic inch. Johnny puts his head back a little and flexes his hands at his sides, trying not to fidget.

“...think the Audi's is bigger,” says Daniel after a couple seconds.

Amanda tosses her hair. “Perhaps a little longer, but it's not as tall.”

“Do you _want_ to haul him around in yours?”

“Nope.”

“Okay, then.”

Johnny looks between them. “Okay? We're good?”

“Not even close,” says Daniel, digging into his pocket. He hands the key to Amanda. “So – back it up to the window?”

She grabs the key. “And make it quick.”

Which means he and Daniel are handling the body. Piece of cake.


	7. Chapter 7

His mom's funeral had been closed-casket, through her own request. She was sick for over a year, and by the end barely recognizable as the woman she'd been, or so everyone said – except that wasn't really true, because when Johnny sat at her bedside, he recognized her. So long as she was alive and speaking and looking at him, he always recognized her. And sure, she'd looked better. But she was still his mom.

He doesn't recognize Kreese now. He is a tumbling assemblage of thick-skinny old man limbs topped by a neck hanging wrong, all covered by a waxy-grey surface that one is reluctant to recognize as _skin_. He is wrong, all wrong.

Maybe the question of open or closed casket had always been a pointless one. Once the person is dead, the body ceases to have anything to do with them. The thing before them is human-shaped, but screams _not a person_. It's so weird.

“Do you believe in souls?” he asks Daniel.

“Oh, God, can we not?” he says. He has looked progressively worse with every passing second.

Johnny feels nettled. He shakes out his hands. “Fine. Let's just get this over with, before he's too stiff to bend.”

And Daniel doesn't like that either, but he's clearly going to be difficult about every step of this whole thing. Johnny's trying to go easy on him, call it a tip for a good deed, but man. It's hard.

He goes to stand over the body, and, gritting his teeth to hide his wince, pulls it away from the wall. It still bends, but not as easily; it's definitely stiffening up.

He clears his throat. “Do you think we should arrange him now, while we can still move him?”

Daniel switches his stare from the body to Johnny. “Arrange him?”

“Well, what are we doing here? I'm assuming we're burying him.”

“There's the Walter White method,” says Amanda, appearing in the doorway again. She looks between them. “You guys really need to pick up the pace.”

“Walter White method, what is that, some kind of brand name?” asks Johnny.

Daniel's face creases. “No, it's – he's the villain of this show on AMC—”

“I mean,” says Amanda, “ _anti-hero_ , but—”

“We are not having this argument again, and certainly not right now,” he says flatly.

Amanda looks at Johnny with raised, confiding eyebrows. “We had to stop watching together by the end. He thinks I'm a secret misogynist because I don't like Skyler.”

“I have no idea what you guys are talking about,” says Johnny, still standing over the corpse of his childhood father figure. “All I need to know is whether this Walter White or whatever method requires him to be curled up or not.”

“We're not doing the Walter White method,” says Daniel, and at least he sounds more annoyed than freaked. Maybe that had been Amanda's goal from the beginning; god, what a fucking woman.

“Let's roll him up,” says Amanda to Johnny. “Whatever we end up doing, that'll be easier.”

“You got it, Boss.”

He bends over the body again. He lifts the forearms and folds them across the lap, trying not to look at the strong, blunt hands that once guided him into his first karate stance. He presses the back forward, holding the head down against the knees like he's helping him with a panic attack and tries not to listen to the crunch of bone in the neck.

“Here,” says Daniel, suddenly kneeling on the floor next to him, “Don't worry about it, I'll take his head, you grab his hips.”

Johnny glances up and meets his gaze for only a second, reading something like regret or compassion or something equally unbearable in those soft brown eyes. If he's thinking about how this is a fitting end for Cobra Kai, or that it's all Johnny's fault and _what else did he expect?_ or anything along those lines, he's doing a good job of hiding it just then.

“Okay,” says Johnny, shifting over, and if his throat hurts, well – he did just get choked, didn't he. “Piece of cake.”


	8. Chapter 8

“Careful, careful, careful,” chants Daniel as they cross the darkened dojo with their burden. Johnny grits his teeth and tries to block him out, but his brain isn't wired to ignore LaRusso.

“Wait, wait, stop,” says Daniel, but then he stops without waiting to see if Johnny has agreed; Johnny takes another couple shuffling steps backwards, and pulls the body right out of the other man's hands. The head and shoulders hit the mat with an unpleasant sound.

“Jesus Christ.”

“I _said_ stop.”

“I told you your grip needed work, man,” says Johnny, still half bent over. “We need to get you down to the junkyard or something, do some brick catching.”

“My grip is just fucking fine, his skin, it's all – loose, okay, it's hard to hold onto.”

“Boys,” says Amanda, waiting at the edge of the room by the trunk of the car. She looks quickly out to the parking lot and back. “If you don't hurry, I'm going to kill you both and see how much this trunk can really hold.”

“You shouldn't joke about that, it's not funny,” says Daniel tightly.

Her eyes narrow. “Oh, I'm sorry, Daniel. Was that insensitive? I'd love to move past this moment and forget you killed a man, but his body is still at your feet and you don't seem to be moving.”

Daniel presses his mouth tight and looks between them. He takes what Johnny assumes is supposed to be a calming breath and says, “We need to put a tarp down, we can't get his DNA all over the trunk.”

“We don't have a tarp,” says Amanda. “Who drives around with a tarp in their car?”

“They can be pretty useful,” starts Johnny, but when they both look at him he has to admit he doesn't, actually, have one. It's one of those things he always meant to get on: having a proper emergency kit. He doesn't even have jumper cables. A real man would have a tarp; that Daniel doesn't either is a cold comfort.

He drops the body and Daniel and Amanda both wince. “I'll go see if there's anything in the back room.”

“Just please, please hurry,” she urges to his back.

“Did he say _junkyard_?” Daniel asks her and then Johnny is down the hallway.

In the back room, he hits paydirt and finds the heavy canvas drop cloth they'd used when they were painting the place. He punches the air, and then he thinks about the afternoon he and Kreese had spent doing the stenciling for the wall, and then he punches the wall.

“Found something,” he says to the LaRussos back in the other room. Daniel looks massively relieved, so there's that.

And it turns out Daniel's overthinking is for once good for something, because everything becomes better the moment they roll the body up in the drop cloth; it stops being a body and starts being just a weird-shaped lump in a drop cloth. Johnny doesn't think he imagines the slight easing in Daniel's shoulders and expression, or that his own chest feels less tight.

“Okay, good,” says Daniel.

“Yeah. Let's do this.”

They do it, and they shut the trunk, and then there's no body _and_ no dropcloth, and that's even better. The three of them look at each other for a long moment.

“Okay,” says Johnny, “now what? Where we going?”

“Away from here,” says Daniel. He leans sideways and looks at the broken glass on the sidewalk. “My DNA is on that glass.”

“It's a broken window in a strip mall in Reseda,” says Amanda, bracing, “I really don't think LAPD is going to be pulling out the forensics unit on this one.”

He nods, but not like he's convinced or going to stop thinking about it any time soon.

Johnny reaches into his pocket to finger his keys. “Okay, so we're just going to. Get in our vehicles and drive away. Like – no big deal.”

“Yeah, but who's driving the hearse?” asks Amanda, and they look at the Audi.

“I will,” says Daniel grimly. “I did it, so if the cops stop me... it's only right if I'm the one driving.”

Johnny slaps his back. “Okay, you guys follow me. I know just the place where we can regroup and figure this all out.”

Daniel and Amanda exchange a look, but they don't argue. From them, that's as good as an endorsement. Johnny's turn to take over; piece of cake.

One by one they pull out of the strip mall parking lot, the Dodge Caravan leading the way.


End file.
